35 - About Your Privacy

I consider your privacy your privacy. In that regard, I don't collect any personally identifiable information. But I would like to collect some anonymous information if you will opt-in. This requires striking a careful balance between data collection and individual privacy. I have endeavored to do that very carefully, with your privacy giving by far the most importance.

The following discussion is a full and complete disclosure of what iToolBox will do if you explicitly give it permission to:

iToolBox will, again only if you give it permission, contact fyngyrz.com and, on first contact, request a serial number. Subsequently, each time iToolBox starts, it reports in the following information, which I collect in a database:

The serial number, once it has been given to the installation (see the About dialog)

So the first time contact is made, fyngyrz.com responds with a serial number that uniquely identifies the installation until/unless the application preferences are deleted. That's the serial number that is sent back by iToolBox in all future contacts.

From then on, each time you start iToolBox, when it lets fyngyrz.com know what serial number it is, what version it is and what version of OS X (MacOS) it is running on, I update a database which I can query, which in turn gives me some more-or-less reliable statistics about how often, and in how many installations, iToolBox is in use.

When iToolBox reports in, one data item that is available to me simply because it has made contact over the Internet is the IP of the data connection. I use this IP to look up the nation (country) that the report comes in from, and I store that country in the database as well. This information allows me to count how many copies are running the USA, in the UK, and so on. I just like to know.

I can manually add a name to the database associated with a serial number, and I have done so for my personal friends and a couple of my beta testers. I will not add your name unless you specifically tell me to do so. There's no way I can do this anyway unless you actually tell me what your name is and your iToolBox serial number as well, but even if you do, I won't add your name to the database unless you explicitly give me permission to.

During this data exchange, fyngyrz.com returns the most recent version available to iToolBox, which in turn shows it in the About dialog so you have a way to know that there is an upgrade to the version you are using. iToolBox will not otherwise nag you or notify you about new versions.

Finally, inasmuch as iToolBox makes contact (if you have given it permission) each time it starts up, I count the startups. That gives me an approximate sense of how much iToolBox is actually being used. From this information I conclude (hopefully reasonably) that one start is someone who simply took a look, many starts is someone who is actually using it to edit images, etc.

If you have any questions or concerns about the process I've described here, please do not hesitate to contact me at fyngyrz@gmail.com and present them to me: I will answer you in as forthright and complete a manner as I am able. Likewise, if the documentation needs clarification on the matter you're concerned with, I will see to that immediately.